Nicole Mitchell
Nicole Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, conceptualist and composer. Her first concern is creating projects where she combines her love for nature, liberation and music in effort to contribute towards the deepening of human consciousness. Born in Syracuse, NY, Nicole was nurtured by the forest near her home and inspired by her mother’s community work as an artist at the Community Folk Art Gallery of Syracuse, founded by Herb Williams. As a youth having been relocated to Orange County California, she was troubled by post-integration racial hostility and found solace in music and her parents’ creative vision of endless possibilities. In college, she turned to improvisation, under the mentorship of Jimmy Cheatham, James Newton, Wendall Logan and Donald Byrd. After moving to Chicago in the early 90s, Mitchell emerged from Chicago’s creative music community. Starting as a street performer, she met and was inspired and encouraged by the artists Leroy Jenkins, Light Henry Huff, Von Freeman, Maia, Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake, Shanta, Avreeayl Ra and Ed Wilkerson, Douglas Ewart, Brenda Jones, George Lewis and David Boykin. In 1994, she joined membership with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and after many years became the first woman president of the organization. While working as a book designer at Third World Press, she also received mentorship from Haki R. Madhubuti. Her musical beginnings include co-founding the group Samana with Shanta and Maia, co-founding WomanFireSpirit with poets Jamika Ajalon and Teresa Vasquez, and playing in the David Boykin Expanse, before founding her own compositional platform, Black Earth Ensemble, in 1998. Mitchell’s music celebrates contemporary African American culture with a creative process informed by the wonders of nature, literature, narrative and a special interest in science fiction. For over 20 years, Nicole has utilized her art to create alternative worlds that “bridge the familiar with the unknown.” Her primary artistic vehicle, Black Earth Ensemble, is named in honor of mother Earth and mama Afrika. Encompassing philosophy and a strong debt to the writings of Octavia E. Butler, Mitchell's music is centered in intercultural collaboration, with works including Mandorla Awakening (2017), Xenogenesis Suite (2008), EarthSeed (2020, co-written with Lisa E. Harris) and Bamako Chicago Sound System (2024). Mitchell composes for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression. As a soloist, bandleader and improviser, she has repeatedly performed throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S. since the early 2000’s. She has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. With an impressive 15 year run (2010-2024) as “Top Flutist of the Year” by both Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association, Mitchell is celebrated for her expression of a inimitable improvisational language on the flute. She is a Guggenheim fellow and a recipient of several awards, including Doris Duke Artist Award, the United States Artist Award, the Herb Alpert Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Nicole Mitchell is a Professor of Music at University of Virginia, teaching in Composition and Computer Technology. Her first book, The Mandorla Letters (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) asks the question “what would an egalitarian, technologically advanced world, in tune with nature look like? Mitchell is honored to be Powell flutist since 2011. At home in North Carolina, she enjoys being a mother and grandmother, while developing the regenerative peace garden, Heartland Oasis Farms.
